Call to the Peoples' Alternative Summit, Enlazando Alternativas 4

Madrid, 14th - 18th May 2010

05 Febrero 2010

Declaration

Call to all the social networks and organisations, trades unions, political forces and civil society movements to join the Peoples' Alternative Summit in defense of peoples' sovereignty, human rights, participatory democracy, labour rights, the rights of women and indigenous peoples, social justice, the defense of the environment in the face of climate change, and the establishment of peace.

In May 2010, the Presidents and Heads of State of the European Union (EU), Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) will meet in Madrid under the Spanish Presidency of the EU. The “Old Continent”, restructured today as the Europe of capital and war, will seek, at this Summit, to push policies and mechanisms favoring finance capital and the big transnational corporations, the plundering of natural resources and the privatization of public services disguised as promises of development. This Summit will take place under the shadow of a financial, economic, environmental and social crisis that is causing increasing unemployment and precarity in Europe and poverty and social exclusion in Latin America.

In Europe, social movements and organizations witness a continuing advance of the Right, and an increasingly powerful and aggressive attack on the labour, economic, political, social, cultural, and environmental rights that have been won in the past. The recent approval of the Lisbon Treaty — in an anti-democratic way which denied the direct participation of the people — will favor the interests of transnational corporations through free trade agreements and the liberalization of investments, to the detriment of the rights of the peoples and the environment. This Fortress Europe, militarized, xenophobic and inhumane, with less public services and more privatizations is not our Europe. To the Europe of capital, war and crisis, we counter-pose solidarity among peoples.

In LAC countries the resistances of the social movements continue to develop. Alongside some Latin American governments, they struggle to defend their sovereignty and, despite difficulties and contradictions, undertake new political projects for social change. These efforts are attacked by criminal actions such as the coup d'etat in Honduras, which poses a serious threat for the entire continent. The election of US President Barack Obama has not led to a change in US policy in the region — as demonstrated by the installation of US military bases in Colombia. In a similar way, two hundred years after independence, the EU attacks the processes of regional integration, using the Spanish government and transnational corporations as its flagship. Disguised as cooperation and development aid, the new galleons of the re-conquest seek to consolidate their domination of the region through free trade agreements.

The bi-regional Europe-Latin America and Caribbean network, Enlazando Alternativas, is mobilizing for the fourth time to create a bi-regional political space, as we did in Guadalajara, Mexico (2004), Vienna, Austria (2006) and Lima, Peru (2008). The Peoples' Alternative Summit, Enlazando Alternativas 4, scheduled to take place from 14th to 18th May 2010, aims to strengthen emerging popular resistances and new convergences and solidarities between our peoples. Despite the criminalization of social movements, it will aim to build a bi-regional political space for mobilization.

We are calling on all the social networks and organisations, trades unions, political forces and civil society movements to join the preparation process and participate in Madrid in the Peoples' Alternative Summit, Enlazando Alternativas 4 in defense of peoples' sovereignty, human rights, participatory democracy, labour rights, the rights of women and indigenous peoples, social justice, the defense of the environment in the face of climate change, and the establishment of peace.

We have shown that we are not invisible. Gandhi once said: “First they ignore us, then they mock us, then they fight us, then we win”.